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Thanks to Mike Mull, Steve Wallace, Erick Posner,
Jerry E. Howard, Ian Clemens, John Chioles, Richard Greenwood, Mark Clute,
Jacques Paris and Neil the Mid Night Mapper for your reactions.
My reaction of this past Friday was in many ways a
"pressure valve failure" after reading that November 15, 2000 is National
ESRI day with some GIS attached to it, supported by organizations to whom
I belong.
It is nice to see that things are different in
Wyoming, thank you John. Neil, as always has a uplifting broad macro
perspective, i.e. the big picture. It is revealing that MI is in fact more
active in higher ed. interaction. The SPSS connection with MI in Canada is an
interesting one and at first view very powerful.
Mark Clute, others and myself are promoters
of no nonsense, hype-lacking, down-to-earth, cost effective GIS and have
found MI to be rather attractive for that purpose. We all have one thing in
common we are allergic to high annual maintenance fees and costly add-ons. MI
appears to have a very big bang for the buck. In Michigan most county GIS
initiatives function between 0.5 and 1% of the total county budget. That
translates into between $40.000 and $100.000 a year to build a county GIS
including data, software, salaries. One reason I stay away from ESRI is its
popularity. On my budget I will not become a training ground or well paid intern
placement for others.
Few of us have a truly overall objective
perspective when it comes to evaluating GIS software. The time it takes to
become functional in any software package is substantial and represents an
(sometimes painful) investment. Hence, once a software choice is made it is
very unlikely that people will change. In Allegan County people are still
running Word Perfect even though they have been told for many years (risking to
loose their job) to switch to MSWord. Of course both work about the same
but not when you talk to one user vs. an other user.
The same holds true for GIS. Once a person learns
one package he or she will stick with it for ease, security, productivity, etc.
Therefore for existing users MI will not become more or less functional due
to backbone programming language choices and other software affiliations. Most
users do not function at that level. The same is true for the desktop ESRI
product. If you have perhaps 500.000 users most will be part-time desktop
users who can care less about Java, oracle, *.com or Microsoft
interactions. They typically only use about 5 to 15% of all the functions
available to them in GIS and then for perhaps only 5 to 10 hours a
week.
At this level is where some of us see MI lacking.
In marketing based on the above it does not matter "how you set the hook" as
long as it takes the first time. Ethics and marketing do not mix. All tactics
are approved, people get big rewards if thew are able to lower the ethical
marketing bar but reap new customers.
In Michigan there are about 10 to 13 counties
holding the frontline in GIS with MI (reads, holding the frontline in GIS with
MI not holding frontline of MI in GIS). Ultimately it is the utility and
efficacy of the product not the product itself. We see things very clear and
obvious. We are proponents of GIS first the software choice second. This is
where ESRI in Michigan and elsewhere starts to annoy me. Likewise the apathy of
other GIS software is making this partly possible. Too bad that there is
not an anti trust provision that applies here.
Well enough, thanks for all your input and
opinions
Lets sometime talk about the wonderful synergy
between TNTMips from MicroImages and MI. This is a GIS powerhouse combo unlike
anyone ever put together (and still much cheaper than a single fully castrated
ArcInfo 8 License but with the utility of the ArcInfo 8 add-on
modules)
Lets keep those bearings straight
Cheers,
Jeroen Wagendorp
Allegan County GIS
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